In this section, you have short passages. After each passage, you will find some items based on the passage. Read the passage carefully and answer the items based on it. You are required to select your answers based solely on the contents of the passage and the opinion of the author.
Passage:
Mr. Rowland Hill, when a young man, was walking through the Lake district, when he one day saw the postman deliver a letter to a woman at a cottage door. The woman turned it over and examined it, and then returned it, saying she could not pay the postage, which was a shilling. Hearing that the letter was from her brother, Mr. Hill paid the postage, in spite of the manifest unwillingness of the woman. As soon as the postman was out of sight, she showed Mr. Hill how his money had been wasted, as far as she was concerned. The sheet was blank. There was an agreement between her brother and herself that as long as all went well with him, he should send a blank sheet in this way once a quarter, and she thus had tidings of him without expense of postage.
The woman and her brother had agreed that
- Athe letter with no postage meant good news
- Bthe blank sheet meant being well
- Cthe blank sheet meant bad news
- Dthe letter with no postage meant unimportant news
Explanation
The siblings had agreed that as long as all went well with him, he would send a blank sheet once a quarter. It was a cost-free way of conveying the good news of his well-being. The other options reverse or distort this agreement. Hence option (b) is correct.